Ed Templeton

Ed Templeton

Introduction

As former pro skateboarding prodigy Templeton refine the future of the sport through the 80s and the 90s, where he turned pro. Templeton’s early skate fame gave him a forum to discuss issues like racism and homophobia that weren’t getting much play among the Thrasher set. It also gave him free reign to lead skateboarding away from the halfpipe and into the terrain of the real world, though he’s predictably modest about his pioneering role.

By the mid-90s Templeton had turned into a businessman and an artist, a kind of unwitting archetype for a new Renaissance man of street culture. Templeton began experimenting with photography in 1995, once again finding himself on the vanguard of a new cutting edge: the mix of social documentary and personal expression.